The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien

      4 February 1938

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      Dear Mr Furth,

      I enclose copy of Chapter I ‘A Long-expected Party’ of possible sequel to The Hobbit. . . . .

      I received a letter from a young reader in Boston (Lincs) enclosing a list of errata [in The Hobbit]. I then put my youngest son, lying in bed with a bad heart,¹ to find any more at twopence a time. He did. I enclose the results – which added to those already submitted should (I hope) make an exhaustive list. I also hope they may one day be required.

      Yours sincerely,

      J. R. R. Tolkien.

      23 To C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin

      [The publishers had again been considering the possibility of publishing Mr Bliss, for which see the introductory note to no. 10.]

      17 February 1938

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      Dear Mr Furth,

      ‘Mr Bliss’ returned safely. I am sorry you have had so much trouble with him. I wish you could find someone to redraw the pictures properly. I don’t believe I am capable of it. I have at any rate no time now – it is easier to write a story at odd moments than draw (though neither are easy). . . . .

      They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‘first chapters’. I have indeed written many. The Hobbit sequel is still where it was, and I have only the vaguest notions of how to proceed. Not ever intending any sequel, I fear I squandered all my favourite ‘motifs’ and characters on the original ‘Hobbit’.

      I will write and get your advice on ‘Mr Bliss’ before I do anything. It will hardly be before the Long Vacation, or the end of my ‘research fellowship’.¹

      Yours sincerely

      J. R. R. Tolkien.

      24 To Stanley Unwin

      [On 11 February, Unwin reported that his son Rayner was ‘delighted with the first chapter’ of the new story.]

      18 February 1938

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      Dear Mr Unwin,

      I am most grateful to your son Rayner; and am encouraged. At the same time I find it only too easy to write opening chapters – and for the moment the story is not unfolding. I have unfortunately very little time, made shorter by a rather disastrous Christmas vacation. I squandered so much on the original ‘Hobbit’ (which was not meant to have a sequel) that it is difficult to find anything new in that world.

      Mr C. S. Lewis tells me that you have allowed him to submit to you ‘Out of the Silent Planet’. I read it, of course; and I have since heard it pass a rather different test: that of being read aloud to our local club (which goes in for reading things short and long aloud). It proved an exciting serial, and was highly approved. But of course we are all rather like-minded.

      It is only by an odd accident that the hero is a philologist (one point in which he resembles me) and has your name.¹ The latter detail could I am sure be altered: I do not believe it has any special significance.

      We originally meant each to write an excursionary ‘Thriller’: a Space-journey and a Time-journey (mine) each discovering Myth.² But the Space-journey has been finished, and the Time-joumey remains owing to my slowness and uncertainty only a fragment, as you know.³

      Yours sincerely

      J. R. R. Tolkien.

      25 To the editor of the ‘Observer’

      [On 16 January 1938, the Observer published a letter, signed ‘Habit’, asking whether hobbits might have been suggested to Tolkien by Julian Huxley’s account of ‘the “little furry men” seen in Africa by natives and. . . . at least one scientist’. The letter-writer also mentioned that a friend had ‘said she remembered an old fairy tale called “The Hobbit” in a collection read about 1904’, in which the creature of that name ‘was definitely frightening’. The writer asked if Tolkien would ‘tell us some more about the name and inception of the intriguing hero of his book. . . . . It would save so many research students so very much trouble in the generations to come. And, by the way, is the hobbit’s stealing of the dragon’s cup based on the cup-stealing episode in Beowulf? I hope so, since one of the book’s charms appears to be its Spenserian harmonising of the brilliant threads of so many branches of epic, mythology, and Victorian fairy literature.’ Tolkien’s reply, though it was not intended for publication (see the conclusion of no. 26), was printed in the Observer on 20 February 1938.]

      Sir, – I need no persuasion: I am as susceptible as a dragon to flattery, and would gladly show off my diamond waistcoat, and even discuss its sources, since the Habit (more inquisitive than the Hobbit) has not only professed to admire it, but has also asked where I got it from. But would not that be rather unfair to the research students? To save them trouble is to rob them of any excuse for existing.

      However, with regard to the Habit’s principal question there is no danger: I do not remember anything about the name and inception of the hero. I could guess, of course, but the guesses would have no more authority than those of future researchers, and I leave the game to them.

      I was born in Africa, and have read several books on African exploration. I have, since about 1896, read even more books of fairy-tales of the genuine kind. Both the facts produced by the Habit would appear, therefore, to be significant.

      But are they? I have no waking recollection of furry pigmies (in book or moonlight); nor of any Hobbit bogey in print by 1904. I suspect that the two hobbits are accidental homophones, and am content^fn3 that they are not (it would seem) synonyms. And I protest that my hobbit did not live in Africa, and was not furry, except about the feet. Nor indeed was he like a rabbit. He was a prosperous, well-fed young bachelor of independent means. Calling him a ‘nassty little rabbit’ was a piece of vulgar trollery, just as ‘descendant of rats’ was a piece of dwarfish malice – deliberate insults to his size and feet, which he deeply resented. His feet, if conveniently clad and shod by nature, were as elegant as his long, clever fingers.

      As for the rest of the tale it is, as the Habit suggests, derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story – not, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George Macdonald is the chief exception. Beowulf is among my most valued sources; though it was not consciously present to the mind in the process of writing, in which the episode of the theft arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at that point. I fancy the author of Beowulf would say much the same.

      My tale is not consciously based on any other book – save one, and that is unpublished: the ‘Silmarillion’, a history of the Elves, to which frequent allusion is made. I had not thought of the future researchers; and as there is only one manuscript there seems at the moment small chance of this reference proving useful.

      But these questions are mere preliminaries. Now that I have been made to see Mr. Baggins’s adventures as the subject of future enquiry I realise that a lot of work will be needed. There is the question of nomenclature. The dwarf-names, and the wizard’s, are from the Elder Edda. The hobbit-names from Obvious Sources proper to their kind. The full list of their wealthier families is: Baggins, Boffin, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Brandybuck, Burrowes, Chubb, Grubb, Hornblower, Proudfoot, Sackville, and Took. The dragon bears as name – a pseudonym – the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan, to squeeze through a hole: a low philological jest. The rest of the names are of the Ancient and Elvish World, and have not been modernised.

      And why dwarves? Grammar prescribes dwarfs;